Helen Keller’s inspiring story has a way of making it into most elementary-school curricula. Many easy-reader books about her life already exist, all keeping to the surface, rarely getting at the complexities of her life. This is no exception. The familiar story unfolds with little drama: birth, fever, the Boston visit, Annie Sullivan, the W-A-T-E-R scene, college, travels, death. Modern readers, even young ones, could surely handle some of the lesser-known details of Keller’s politics and adult life. Strangely, MacLeod chooses to call the adults in Helen’s life by their first names. While this works with Annie, it does not with Alexander (Graham Bell). Watercolor-filled ink drawings carefully match the text, but competent illustrations cannot make up for what is missing: energy and insight. A better choice for new readers would be Johanna Hurwitz’s Step into Reading offering, Helen Keller: Courage in the Dark (1997), the stalwart Stewart and Polly Graff’s Helen Keller: Crusader for the Blind and Deaf (1991), or for older readers, Joan Dash’s The World at Her Fingertips (2001). The lack of notes, bibliography or online resources further mar this book. (Biography. 6-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-55337-999-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses.
An NBA star pays tribute to the influence of his grandfather.
In the same vein as his Long Shot (2009), illustrated by Frank Morrison, this latest from Paul prioritizes values and character: “My granddad Papa Chilly had dreams that came true,” he writes, “so maybe if I listen and watch him, / mine will too.” So it is that the wide-eyed Black child in the simply drawn illustrations rises early to get to the playground hoops before anyone else, watches his elder working hard and respecting others, hears him cheering along with the rest of the family from the stands during games, and recalls in a prose afterword that his grandfather wasn’t one to lecture but taught by example. Paul mentions in both the text and the backmatter that Papa Chilly was the first African American to own a service station in North Carolina (his presumed dream) but not that he was killed in a robbery, which has the effect of keeping the overall tone positive and the instructional content one-dimensional. Figures in the pictures are mostly dark-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-250-81003-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
This second early biography of Cousteau in a year echoes Jennifer Berne’s Manfish: A Story of Jacques Cousteau (2008), illustrated by Eric Puybaret, in offering visuals that are more fanciful than informational, but also complements it with a focus less on the early life of the explorer and eco-activist than on his later inventions and achievements. In full-bleed scenes that are often segmented and kaleidoscopic, Yaccarino sets his hook-nosed subject amid shoals of Impressionistic fish and other marine images, rendered in multiple layers of thinly applied, imaginatively colored paint. His customarily sharp, geometric lines take on the wavy translucence of undersea shapes with a little bit of help from the airbrush. Along with tracing Cousteau’s undersea career from his first, life-changing, pair of goggles and the later aqualung to his minisub Sea Flea, the author pays tribute to his revolutionary film and TV work, and his later efforts to call attention to the effects of pollution. Cousteau’s enduring fascination with the sea comes through clearly, and can’t help sparking similar feelings in readers. (chronology, source list) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)
Pub Date: March 24, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-375-85573-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2009
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